The New York Mets got six shutout innings from Nolan McLean yesterday as he continues to develop into a top starter.
New York Mets starter Nolan McLean pitched another gem yesterday against the Chicago White Sox in the Mets’ 2-1 loss in the series finally, but he did have to negotiate some traffic. McLean walked four in his shutout outing, and that put him in a situation in which he’s been a veritable hardball Houdini — with the bases loaded.
McLean made his latest bases-loaded mess in the third inning, when the White Sox loaded the bases on a single and consecutive walks. Rather than panic, McLean used a sequence that featured a sinker, a back-foot curveball and a sinker on the inner half to freeze Andrew Benintendi and get the third out to escape from harm.
“Ideally, I wouldn’t want to get into [those situations],” McLean said in a piece written by Anthony DiComo of MLB.com. “You’ve just got to execute pitches. Sometimes, you get burned on pitches you execute anyways. But I think over a large sample size, if you continue to execute pitches, it works.”
Interim manager praised the White Sox lineup, which had Mets pitchers on their heels for most of the weekend. McLean was the one starter who shut down Chicago completely, and the White Sox were able to play long ball with nearly every hurler but McLean.
“Those are good hitters, been swinging it really well against us all series, having tough at-bats,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said. “I thought [McLean] was on the attack all day. He mixed. He was really unpredictable -- hard to know what he was going to do. So I felt good about what he did today with six strong innings.”
McLean has also had to learn the kind of resilience that comes with pitching for a bad baseball team. That wasn’t supposed to happen given that the Mets were still in contention when McLean was brought up last year, and his efforts were heroic as he helped keep New York from collapsing completely down the stretch.
Now he has to suffer through games like yesterday’s, where the Mets do little or nothing to support him, then find heartbreaking ways to lose games at the end. That happened again yesterday against the White Sox as faux-closer Kodai Senga surrendered a walk-off home run to Tristan Peters after the Mets fought back to tie the game at 1-1. The focus remains on pitchers like McLean, though, as the Mets try to build out a staff for next year.
